ELMIRAGE - If you
drive the vast maze of winding, dirt back roads of California's Mojave
Desert long enough you'll either end up near a secret military test installation,
or on a movie set, or both.

Near the abandoned movie locale lies a Cold War mystery,
the Mojave Desert's secret radar ranges.

Driving about 30 miles east of downtown Palmdale, in
this corner of the Mojave Desert, a large lake materializes miraculously
in the desert.

A mirage? No. A lake, yes. It's the El Mirage dry lake
bed, once the scene of battle between aliens and jet fighter aces in the
blockbuster "Independence Day."

Remember Will Smith's dogfighting with an alien interceptor,
and a bunch of RVs charging hell for leather across the desert toward a
movie-lot facsimile of the famed Area 51 secret air base? Yep. El Mirage.

That's the Mojave Desert for you. A home to Tinseltown,
and also to real-life secret air bases, all within a few miles and a few
mirages of each other.

The air fields and radar ranges near El Mirage loom up
off the desert floor. If you drive off the paved path onto the washboard
roads off State Route 138, near 245th Street East and Avenue R-8, you'll
find Gray Butte.

Up until a few years ago, secret stealthy radar testing
was conducted at Gray Butte. Locals called an enormous mobile hangar "The
Behemoth." Available research shows the hangar most likely was used
to shield aircraft mock-ups from spy satellite overflights.

Now, at the Gray Butte site, operations are a bit less
mysterious. A company called General Atomics will do work related to the
Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, a spy in the sky.

At the Gray Butte site, encompassed by a barbed-wire
fence with "No Trespassing" signs posted, there's an eerie-looking
real life "X Files" cluster of buildings surrounded by radar,
microwave and satellite dishes and a semi-abandoned guard shack.

At first glance, the facility looks deserted, except
for an occasional weekend charge of off-road motorcyclists, or a jack rabbit
thumping off into the brush.

A visitor who keeps watching will now find cars parked
at the Gray Butte site, and a security truck might make a pass.

Security at the area, now barely visible, once was as
tough and blunt as the private contract security cordon that keeps the
curious away from Area 51.

UFOs or what?

So what was out there on the ground at Gray Butte and
other ranges scattered across the Mojave Desert? The Gray Butte site includes
a 5,000-foot runway and airfield in addition to the radar array.

Tom Mahood, an engineer with avid curiosity about UFOs
and the generally unusual, went in search of answers after hearing tales
of strange sightings.

The answer to Mahood, even after years of investigation,
isn't all that simple. But his research yielded plausible answers, though
not as juicy as a bonafide, authenticated UFO in the hand.

The El Mirage facility - also known as Gray Butte - is
a radar cross range facility, or RCS range. According to Los Angeles County
assessors' records unearthed by Mahood, it was once owned and occupied
by aerospace giant McDonnell Douglas, the former prime contractor that
was sold to The Boeing Co.

Mahood contends sightings of strange activity are likely
phenomena connected to the work at the radar ranges.

In addition to Gray Butte, there are at least four others
in the Mojave Desert - Northrop Grumman's at Tejon Ranch west of Rosamond,
Lockheed Martin's at Helendale, Junction Ranch's at China Lake Naval Weapons
Center near Ridgecrest and Wheatpatch north of Tehachapi near Bakersfield.

Strange sights

Mahood wrote about these installations in an Internet-posted
article titled, "Radar Ranges of the Mojave."

Why the Antelope Valley? Also known as the Aerospace
Valley, the region is home to development, production, testing and modification
of the greatest air armada in the history of the world. The air forces
that won the Cold War and the Persian Gulf war were born here.

The Valley - stretching from as far south as Acton and
Agua Dulce to as far north as Ridgecrest - from Victorville to the east
and to Hughes-Elizabeth Lake to the west - is witness to some of the most
incredible flying machines ever built.

Some of these aircraft are known and now world famous
or historic. Some remain cloaked behind a veil of black world mystery.

These aircraft lift off from multiple military bases
and aerospace contract facilities from Air Force Plant 42, Edwards Air
Force Base and the China Lake Naval Weapons Center. Often, moving in the
dark of night, they wing their way to Nevada where they go through testing
at the ranges of Nellis Air Force Base, Tonopah Test Range, and yes, Area
51.

The list of these birds of prey and reconnaissance craft
include such legendary flying machines as the U-2 spy plane, the SR-71
Blackbird, the F-117A stealth fighter and the B-2 stealth bomber.

Most recently, flying above the Valley skies from the
El Mirage area is the Predator unmanned aerial vehicle, an eye-in-the-sky
spy that conducted reconnaissance over Yugoslavia and was used to monitor
both battlefield intelligence and the tenets of the Dayton Peace Accords.

With the Valley's history, secrecy has surrounded development
of such awesome warbirds and with that secrecy comes the unknown, the mysterious
and the unexplained.

With the unknown, or yet unveiled, come the myths, legends
and rumors.

Even those who know the rich Valley military and aerospace
history have reported sightings of weird flying objects near El Mirage
and west of Rosamond near Edwards AFB.

Mostly, these sightings go unexplained or are given no
credence from official sources.

There's nothing up there

On July 4, 1997, a series of visitors reported seeing
in the early evening hours white-and-orange orbs hovering in the sky southeast
of town. The orbs seemed to hover for long periods of time before zipping
away at unimaginable speeds. Minutes later the sight would appear again
and repeat the maneuver.

Months later, one evening in April 1998, to the north
in Rosamond, residents shopping and eating dinner were awed by a large
hovering object sighted above the Albertson's supermarket off 25th Street
West and Rosamond Boulevard.

Viewers called the Valley Press and described a flying
object the shape of a diamond, or in some reports, a triangle or octagonal
object. It was reported to be the size of two football fields with bright
lights of orange and white encompassing its bottom.

Residents stared; motorists pulled off the road to gawk
as it hovered several hundred feet above the store. More than a dozen residents
reached for cell phones and ran for pay phones to report the sighting.

Every sighting report was similar, but not exactly the
same, and everyone reported absolutely no sound whatsoever associated with
the object.

The response from area sheriff's, government and military
officials - nothing was there.

Rosamond sheriff's officials said they had no reports
of such sightings. Air Force Plant 42 officials had no information on the
event. And at Edwards, the official position was that the base had no operations
or flights scheduled in that area at that time of night.

Edwards officials speculated that it could have been
a helicopter with a lighted billboard attached to the bottom, akin to the
ones that occasionally buzz The Hangar during a JetHawks baseball game.

Federal Aviation Administration officials showed nothing
on the log for the night.

Gray Butte

Outside El Mirage for nearly a dozen years locals have
watched and talked about either strange sightings and encounters at the
Gray Butte facility.

Some locals ventured into the desert area to investigate
phenomena described as bright white and orange orbs in the sky. These orbs
have appeared to hover, then zip across the sky, stop in a split second
and then vaporize.

In exploring several such sightings, one Llano local
encountered the El Mirage facility. Circumventing the property, he found
himself face to face with surveillance cameras atop poles just inside the
barbed fence. And, on at least one occasion, he found himself being watched
or followed on the rough dirt roads by private security.

The local, who spoke on condition of anonymity, has surveyed
the El Mirage site for nearly a decade, watching what he calls "The
Behemoth," a six-story high structure, open on each end, move across
the desert compound.

"It moves so slow, always at twilight; you couldn't
hardly see it move. You'd have to focus on a butte to see it move,"
the local said.

As it made its slow trek, the building meets an angled
white post, or pylon, to cover it from unwanted desert spectators or Russian
satellites, he speculates.

But The Behemoth's desert trek is far from what is strange
about the activity.

One night, watching from a distance, the show really
began.

"Just after dark ... this here started to show extra
white," he said, pointing to the pylon, in the middle of the range.
"When it got dark and darker (the pylon) became so bright - brilliant
that I couldn't look at it with my binoculars.

"Then, just in a snap of a finger it became so bright
and then it just blacked out. Then, it became brighter and brighter again
- a brilliant ball of orange in front of the building.

"All of the sudden," he said, "there must
have been a breach of security and everything was shut down. Black."

That was in just one viewing of the range. In others,
he said, bright white and orange orbs flocked together about the range.
Within moments they would "start to move slowly and then smaller pieces
would appear and then break away" into nothing, vanish in the air.

Today, The Behemoth is gone; the pylon is gone; and,
by most accounts, the encounters with rent-acops have stopped. And the
orb sightings have vanished.

Independent researcher Mahood does not necessarily subscribe
to UFO theories of alien visitors, because science, his research and evidence
found don't seem to support that finding.

"My explanations are more mundane," Mahood
said.

Essentially, these sightings rise from contractor-operated
facilities for testing the radar cross-sections of military aircraft.

These, he said, are pretty interesting in their own right.

Mahood, in watching and photographing The Behemoth, said
what locals have seen around El Mirage is probably nothing more than a
mobile hangar and a pylon used to hold the shapes of aircraft for radar
testing.

Simply, Mahood says, RCS facilities are used to test
radar on aircraft - or to test how radar won't work on aircraft.

Testing stealth

Radar works by taking a radar beam (a high frequency
radio wave) and directing it toward an object. Some energy is absorbed
by the object; some of the beam bounces back off and is picked up by a
receiver, creating an image called a radar signature.

So, how does all this technology relate to stealth?

Simply, the very essence of stealth technology is to
shape the object in such a manner that radar beams that strike it are radiated
every which way but back toward the radar receivers.

Mahood says while stealth is thought to be undetectable
to radar, every object, even stealth aircraft, can be picked up on radar.
The important thing is how close the object has to be before the signal
it reflects back toward the radar receiver is strong enough to register.

These RCS ranges were probably used in the early and
late 1980s and into the 1990s to develop and test the advanced stealth
technology of warplanes such as the F-117A stealth fighter and the B-2
stealth bomber.

And, Mahood said, "The most reliable way to find
out how much radar signal a new aircraft design will reflect is to simply
try it and find out.

"And there's no need to use an actual aircraft;
a smaller size model" will do.

And that seems to explain the pylon used to hold variously
shaped model aircraft.

The building, Mahood says, probably housed some type
of hoist to lift models onto the pylon. Then the building was rolled back,
via some type of wheels and tracks, and radar testing began.

Mahood said the building is a mobile target shelter that
probably covers the model to protect it from weather and unauthorized observation.

Mahood said probably the most famous of these ranges,
of course, is Area 51 in the Nevada desert.

Other explanations

Mahood does not necessarily subscribe to the more sinister,
or government conspiracy, explanations.

"Well, a segment of the UFO community has firmly
latched on to the idea that these installations are simply covers for underground
bases," he said.

Stories, he added, go on to describe multiple level underground
facilities, (with the requisite genetic engineering labs) and flying discs
zipping in and out through surface openings, which some locals surmise
is some kind of underground testing involving ball plasma, ball lightning
or secret military jet propulsion systems.

Upon inspection of Gray Butte and other similar ranges
from the air and ground, Mahood found "no evidence whatsoever of any
kind of subsurface structures, other than normal building and mast foundations.
There were no signs of access points, ventilation ducts or utility feeds."

As for the glowing orbs and flying craft, Mahood has
collected and developed his own theories.

Of the orbs sighted, Mahood said, the more mundane explanations
are that of the testing of cruise missiles and drones, flare activity and
even simple car headlights coming over the hills.

"I've seen flare activity in the desert that looks
much, much closer than it really is." He explained their brightness
could appear very close while being 30 to 40 miles away. And the flares,
when attached to parachutes, can hover for 5 to 6 minutes before dropping
out of sight or fizzling.

As for cruise missile testing, Mahood said if a rocket
is viewed from the back end, particle beams appear and make "nice-looking
orbs." He said these orbs can appear to hover and can "suddenly
jerk up and down."

And finally, but certainly not the last of many possible
explanations, Mahood said, are drones, which he has seen tested near Twentynine
Palms, the Marine Corps Ground-Air Combat Training Center.

When the military loses communication with a drone, this
flying object can appear as an orb and again can appear to hover for long
periods of time before "floating or fluttering to the ground."

As for sightings of the large craft like the one seen
in Rosamond, Mahood isn't quite sure what is being tested.

Noting similar sightings have appeared throughout the
United States, including one in Illinois earlier this year, he suspects
people may have seen some kind of test of a flying antenna, or the testing
and development of some kind of bi-static radar.

In the case of the antenna, he says, the structure may
have the ability to pitch upward to intercept a beam from a transmitter
and a receiver, both from extremely long distances away. This antenna and
its ability to pitch upward may create the perception of a large hovering
craft.

Despite all his theories and research, Mahood emphasizes
he is no expert.

"I'm just a plain guy," he said, who is giving
alternatives to what people have seen. "What I try to do is to sever
the explanation from the sightings."

What Mahood does know for sure is that sightings are
fun and that people will believe what they want to believe.

"People want to believe there is something behind
this stuff as part of the new world order," he said. "It's wacky
and interesting."

"I'm sure there is testing going on out there, probably
on stealth craft, mostly at night, and on things we do not yet know about.

"And whatever's up there, if it doesn't have a transponder,
no one who doesn't need to know is going to know it is out there. ... It's
invisible." _____

In addition to Gray Butte, there are at least four others
in the Mojave Desert - Northrop Grumman's at Tejon Ranch west of Rosamond,
Lockheed Martin's at Helendale, Junction Ranch's at China Lake Naval Weapons
Center near Ridgecrest and Wheatpatch north of Tehachapi near Bakersfield.

BH: I have visited these facilities and strange sights
have been seen around these facilities by multiple witnesses - some of
which can only be classed as classic UFO phenomena. Strange sights

Mostly, these sightings go unexplained or are given no
credence from official sources. There's nothing up there

On July 4, 1997, a series of visitors reported seeing
in the early evening hours white-and-orange orbs hovering in the sky southeast
of town. The orbs seemed to hover for long periods of time before zipping
away at unimaginable speeds. Minutes later the sight would appear again
and repeat the maneuver.

Months later, one evening in April 1998, to the north
in Rosamond, residents shopping and eating dinner were awed by a large
hovering object sighted above the Albertson's supermarket off 25th Street
West and Rosamond Boulevard.

Viewers called the Valley Press and described a flying
object the shape of a diamond, or in some reports, a triangle or octagonal
object. It was reported to be the size of two football fields with bright
lights of orange and white encompassing its bottom.

Residents stared; motorists pulled off the road to gawk
as it hovered several hundred feet above the store. More than a dozen residents
reached for cell phones and ran for pay phones to report the sighting.

Every sighting report was similar, but not exactly the
same, and everyone reported absolutely no sound whatsoever associated with
the object.

The response from area sheriff's, government and military
officials - nothing was there.

BH: Right! Witnesses say differently. They were interviewed
on television.

Rosamond sheriff's officials said they had no reports
of such sightings. Air Force Plant 42 officials had no information on the
event. And at Edwards, the official position was that the base had no operations
or flights scheduled in that area at that time of night. Edwards officials
speculated that it could have been a helicopter with a lighted billboard
attached to the bottom, akin to the ones that occasionally buzz The Hangar
during a JetHawks baseball game. That was in just one viewing of the range.
In others, he said, bright white and orange orbs flocked together about
the range. Within moments they would "start to move slowly and then
smaller pieces would appear and then break away" into nothing, vanish
in the air.

BH: These orbs have been seen at the Northrop and Lockheed
facility as well. Today, The Behemoth is gone; the pylon is gone; and,
by most accounts, the encounters with rent-acops have stopped. And the
orb sightings have vanished.

Independent researcher Mahood does not necessarily subscribe
to UFO theories of alien visitors, because science, his research and evidence
found don't seem to support that finding.

"My explanations are more mundane," Mahood
said.

Essentially, these sightings rise from contractor-operated
facilities for testing the radar cross-sections of military aircraft.

BH: I don't agree with Mahood.

Upon inspection of Gray Butte and other similar ranges
from the air and ground, Mahood found "no evidence whatsoever of any
kind of subsurface structures, other than normal building and mast foundations.
There were no signs of access points, ventilation ducts or utility feeds."

BH: I have big news for Mahood. I have a photocopy showing
blueprints of the underground facilities. The scale model aircraft are
raised on the "stingers" (pylons) on hydraulic elevators from
underground. I have seen and photographed this process. As for the glowing
orbs and flying craft, Mahood has collected and developed his own theories.